Christine is the understudy for the Opera’s female diva Mme. Christine considers them both good friends but doesn't openly express if she loves them. But famed opera baritone Anatole Garron (Nelson Eddy) hopes to win Christine's heart. Meanwhile, Inspector Raoul Dubert (Edgar Barrier) wants Christine to quit the Opera and marry him. Claudin steals a prop mask from the costume department to cover his now-disfigured face and becomes obsessed with Christine. Now being hunted down by the police for murder, he flees to the sewers of the Opera. Screeching and wailing, he dashes out the door clutching his face. Just as he tosses the body of Pleyel to the floor, Georgette, the publisher's assistant, throws etching acid at Claudin. Convinced that Pleyel is trying to steal his concerto, Claudin leaps up and begins to strangle him. It is his concerto that is merely being endorsed and praised by Franz Liszt. Someone begins to play music in the next room, and he looks up in shock when he hears it. Claudin persists, but Pleyel rudely tells him to leave and goes back to the etchings he was working on.įinally giving up, Claudin stands there for a moment and hangs his head sadly. No one there knows what happened to it, and do not seem to care. After submitting it and not hearing a response, he becomes worried and returns to the publishers, Maurice Pleyel & Georgette Desjardins, to ask about it. In a desperate attempt to gain money, Claudin tries to get a concerto he has written published. This is not the case however, for Claudin has spent it all by anonymously funding the music lessons of Christine Dubois (Susanna Foster), a young soprano whom Claudin has secretly fallen in love with. He is dismissed because of this, the conductor of the opera house assuming that he has enough money to support himself.

However he has been losing the use of the fingers of his left hand, which affects his violin-playing. Erique Claudin (Claude Rains) had been a violinist at the Paris Opera House for twenty years.

The phantom of the opera movie 1943